Police departments do exactly what monopolies always do — abuse and cheat consumers and, in the words of Benjamin Tucker, “furnish poison instead of nutriment.” As monopolies, police departments are exempt by law from any competitive pressures, which are the only truly effective means of ensuring that they don’t exploit and harm their consumers, the communities they “protect and serve.” “[T]he State,” Tucker writes, “takes advantage of its monopoly of defence to furnish invasion instead of protection.” Its patrons pay for the privilege of their own enslavement.